


i was so much older then [i'm younger than that now]

by voodoochild



Series: Challenge on Infinite Earths [10]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, The Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Time Lords and Ladies, written pre-Twelve and pre-Capaldi FWIW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 13:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2623376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lix's TARDIS lands on Earth in the year 198,050, it is the first time they’ll go for him, but the third time for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was so much older then [i'm younger than that now]

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages", written for the Challenge on Infinite Earths (day 8 - futuristic).
> 
> As mentioned, this was written long before Peter Capaldi's casting as the Doctor (posted to my Tumblr only, whoops), and I maintain that Lix makes a better Time Lady than Randall would make a Time Lord. So Randall is Randall, and not the Doctor.

She’s insistent - his first trip to the future (as opposed to the past, and he’s had a little much of that, Cromwell still wants his head on a spike) should be to something spectacular, so he can see what becomes of humanity. He’d tried to tell her he was ready to see some new planets, but she was adamant, he’s from a backward country (“oi!” “It’s true, darling, hate to break it to you.”) at a fairly backward and dark period in Earth’s history. Let’s save the 8 billion races and fifteen hundred solar systems of the Interstellar Configuration for when his brain is less likely to simply shut down at the sight of it. 

And so she brought him to the seat of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, being extremely closed-mouthed about why this particular year and planet. He hadn’t noticed too much at the time, her TARDIS had been loudly declaring that he was not allowed to run home screaming, and are you certain about this, tiny angry Scottish human? It’s become a running theme between him and her TARDIS - they yell back and forth at each other (and *that’s* never not going to be odd, having a shouting match with a telepathic sapient spaceship) until Randall realizes it’s what he needed, and the TARDIS lets him cool off in the Zero Room any time he needs to. He thinks Lix might be a little jealous that he gets along so well with her ship.

Which is likely why she’s shoved him into some period-appropriate trousers and tunic - he is dubious at the violent green color, but apparently it’s meant to honor the Eternal Solitary Deity? - and dragged him up to the Great Observatory. The TARDIS translation circuits in his head are going slightly haywire, so many languages and races to differentiate, and even Lix’s usually-dazzling nature and appearance, her curls and sparkling smile and oddly-blue eyes and penchant for brightly-colored shawls, fades in the face of sheer alien culture.

They reach the Observatory, a massive room that has little cubes where each visitor stands or sits, and requests to see different solar systems. Lix’s fingers fly over the controls and pick out the Milky Way, and she drags him over to the console by his collar.

"Now, pay attention, darling, you’ve simply got to see the entire Empire as it stands now."

"I’m paying attention," he grumbles, but his irritation vanishes as the ceiling explodes into a hundred million points of light. "This is - this is all part-?"

She grins. “Did you think the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire was a few star systems?”

"Well, I didn’t think it was this vast." He reaches his fingers out, as if he could truly touch something like a star. "How many people are there?"

"Ninety-six billion humans, at last count. Plus all the other species - Jagrafess and Cholians and Mindaxians and Usurians and Sontarans and Cheem and - just, everything. Anything you could imagine and a good deal you can’t." She bites her lip and looks over at him. "Will you - you don’t want to go home, do you?"

He’ll know what she was asking, years later, when he’s been left back home and without knowing it, she’d run from the Time War right back to him. She hadn’t been asking him if he were frightened; she’d been telling him she knew what it was like to be so wonderstruck at the possibilities of the universe that you never wanted to stay in one place.

"No," he’d said, lacing his fingers with hers. "I want to see every single planet in the universe."

She throws her head back, laughs delightedly and pulls him to her. “Sweetheart, even I’m only up to fifty-two thousand planets. At least sixty billion more to go.”

"Then you can see the rest with me," he says, and goes to kiss her. A muffled explosion sounds in the distance - which is impressive, considering the Observatory cubes are soundproof - and she breaks away to open it, finds hundreds of people running and smoke filling the hall. He peers around the corner. "What is it?"

"Come on!" she yells, tugging him behind her and taking off for the source of the explosions. 

They weave their way through the crowd - the rest of which are running *away* from the smoke and explosions - and he loses her for a moment in the chaos. There’s a muffled thump nearby, and someone shoves him into an alcove. Barely a moment later, there’s a sonic boom and fire where he once stood, and he looks up to find himself standing there. Older by twenty years, wearing a pair of black pinstriped trousers, waistcoat, and blue shirt, as well as a pair of thick glasses, but it’s himself. Lix had warned him he might encounter himself once or twice, but there’s a difference between sitting in the TARDIS library discussing hypotheticals and staring into your own eyes.

"You’re all right, I trust?" the other-him asks. 

"Fine," he gets out, and other-him nods curtly, attempts to disappear back into the crowd. "Wait!"

"I can’t stay. What is it?"

He looks away, looks back at his other self, at the lines on his own face and the thinness to his frame. “Do I - is she -?”

Other-him closes his eyes briefly, runs his fingers over his sapphire cufflinks in a gesture that sickens him with familiarity. The ritual’s still there. It doesn’t get better.

"Do you remember what she told you about paradoxes?" He nods, and other-him continues. "I can’t tell you everything, but - you’ll get her back. Remember that. It’s going to be the worst feeling you’ve ever imagined, but it’s worth it. She’ll forgive you."

It comes to pass, after a dozen years of seeing the universe, nineteen chronological years after she leaves him in Barcelona. Nineteen years of impossible memories and the knowledge that he’ll find her, because he’s already found her somewhere in his future. He buys dozens of pairs of sapphire-and-onyx cufflinks, has his suits tailored the way he remembers seeing. Won’t realize until he walks into Lime Grove Studios to find her human that everything depends on him changing the present. 

He breaks the chain with the TARDIS key on it. It looks like a ring to her.

He won’t ever forget the way she looked at him when the artron energy dissipated and her second heart began beating again. It’s the worst feeling he’s ever experienced. She leaves him again, takes Freddie and Bel with her just to spite him. Comes back after one Earth day for him and what he suspects is five years for her, judging by Freddie and Bel. She does, in fact, eventually forgive him, and decides that she’ll take him with her to show Freddie and Bel Earth during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire.

A protest gets out of hand. Smoke bombs. Laser dispersal rifles. Lix gets Freddie and Bel back to the TARDIS, but it’s like a lock clicking when he sees the back of his own head in the crowd.

Saving one’s own life is a lot harder than one would imagine.


End file.
